Nobel Prize Winner. A longtime Northwestern University professor, he shared the 2010 Prize in Economics for the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides model, a method of explaining the way in which ‘market frictions’, the mismatch between supply and expectations, can effect unemployment. The child of Danish immigrants, he was raised in north central Oregon, received his undergraduate degree from Willamette University of Salem, Oregon, joined the Northwestern faculty in 1965, and in 1967 earned his Ph.D. from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie-Mellon University. Over the years, his research focused on the economics of supply and demand mismatch in the labor market, looking at how the time and effort required to complete a transaction as well as such factors as interest rates and unemployment benefits can lead to unemployment in the face of available jobs. Indeed, a tangential use of his research has been the in field of organized romantic matchmaking, specifically in an attempt to assure that goals are realistic. For his work Dr. Mortensen was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in conjunction with Peter Diamond of M.I.T. and Christopher Pissarides of the London School of Economics. A visiting professor at Denmark’s Aarhus University which has named a building in his honor, he received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, was past president of the Society of Economic Dynamics, and was an accomplished amateur classical singer. Dr. Mortensen never retired and died after being ill with cancer for some time. (bio by: Bob Hufford)